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April 08, 2009

U.S. Attorney, Students Talk Pot While Munching Pizza

Put pro-pot law students, a Republican-appointed U.S. attorney, a
television camera and free pizza (actual pie, at left) into the same room, and you’re pretty
much guaranteed some entertainment.

So it was Wednesday afternoon at Hastings, when top Bay Area federal prosecutor Joseph Russoniello showed up to debate Joe Elford, chief counsel with Americans for Safe Access. The event, moderated by Hastings professor Rory Little (who showed little shame about tearing into his slices with the aplomb of an Arcata agriculturalist), aimed to make sense of federal pot enforcement in California, given Attorney General Eric Holder’s recent comments that the feds wouldn’t bust people who complied with state law.

Russoniello
treated Holder’s statements with a respectful shoulder shrug: since
California’s regulations mandate that medical dispensaries be
nonprofits — and the feds have always prioritized commercial
operations over users and legitimately sick people — the attorney
general has effectively changed little. Elford latched onto
Russoniello’s comment that co-ops have “little” to fear from federal law
enforcement, saying he would have felt much more comfortable had the
U.S. attorney said “nothing to fear.”

But overall, Russoniello more than held his own.

More
on Russoniello's appearance, a bit of heckling and photos of actual people, after the jump.

Elford & Russoniello address a mellow bunch of Hastings students.

When Elford disputed Russoniello’s characterization that a 1970s era
commission had concluded that marijuana was harmful and shouldn’t be
legal, the U.S. attorney read aloud from testimony given by one of the
commissioners saying just that. Elford never responded directly, and it
took a sharp student to point out that even though the commissioner may
have said he didn’t think marijuana should be legal, that didn’t drop
decriminalization off the table.

And
when some spectators ranted through familiar legalization arguments —
that the feds won’t allow real scientific studies, that alcohol is much
worse than marijuana, and that pot smokers are generally harmless teddy
bears — Russoniello came off looking, well, more prepared than they did
(even though he couldn’t resist that old drug warrior shibboleth, that
marijuana is a gateway). The medical pot system in California is rife
with abuse, Russoniello said, with dispensaries loathe to police
themselves and doctors phoning in prescriptions.

Comments

Maybe you didn't attend the same debate that I did. Or maybe you just read the Cliff's notes.

And since you wasted 3 full paragraphs trying to be clever and devoted 2 to substance, I almost feel bad pointing out that one of those 2 gives a wrong account of the exchange.

What the student pointed out was that Russoniello's reading from a member of the Shafer Commission report didn't contradict anything that Elford said. And incidentally, you seem to gloss over the biggest point. Elford's was a description of the the findings of the report (titled "Marihuana, A Signal of Misunderstanding). Then Russoniello read the comments of one commissioner who didn't fully agree with the findings that were finally published.

So Russoniello quoted a guy who was commenting, after the report's release, on being overruled by the rest of the Commission. Apparently his concerns about legalization were considered by the Commission and dismissed. And Russoniello thought this was a good argument?

I was there. It was a drag that some people tried to turn what was supposed to be an informative panel into a policy debate. If it was going to be a debate, obviously Russoniello was going to win. He's been doing this for 40 years and he's quite used to hecklers by now.

Elford could have been better prepared and less slippery. He tried to point out how unfortunate it is that a "gray area" in the law can result in a 10-year mandatory minimum. Oh, the injustice! Wait, how much possession are we talking about for such a sentence? 1,000 Kgs. That's right, a metric ton. That would supply most state colleges for a year.

It shouldn't even be debated. Pot is a relatively harmless substance (compare to most things we ingest), and consumption in the privacy of our own home should be protected by the Constitution (i.e., the right to privacy in the "penumbra" of certain amendments). JR is a fascist and has no business being the US Attorney for the Bay Area.